Climate change is expected to cause both more droughts and more extreme rain. The physics is straightforward. Warmer air holds more water. Winds carry water vapor from where it evaporates to where it rains. During dry spells, air can hold more water, more water evaporates, leading to more droughts in the evaporating region. During rainstorms, the air has more water vapor and it rains more.
Are the events of 2024 due to climate change? In climate jargon, has the climate change signal emerged from the natural variability? That’s a harder question. Statistical significance is, by design, a very high bar. There’s a lot of maybe between statistically significant yes and statistically significant no. Floods and drought are intermittent, noisy, and regional, making statistical significance challenging. A signal seems to have emerged in some regions but not globally. The text describing the table Bob posts says
There is low confidence in the emergence of heavy precipitation and pluvial and river flood frequency in observations, despite trends that have been found in a few regions
and
There is low confidence in the emergence of drought frequency in observations, for any type of drought, in all regions … significant drought trends are observed in several regions with at least medium confidence
If climate change continues, the IPCC says there is “high confidence” that climate change will cause “the intensification of heavy precipitation” and the “worsening of droughts”.
So, whether the droughts and floods of 2024 are caused by humans or not, they paint a vivid picture of the world of the future and the challenges we face.